For me, the word February conjures up visions of Valentine’s Day — a holiday we’ve been conditioned to associate with cards, chocolate, roses, champagne and romantic dinners for a special someone in our lives. This got me thinking about all the people in my life that I love and who have been my cheerleaders through the best of times and the really hard times. How do I show my appreciation for their presence in my life?

Sometimes it may be just writing a letter or sending a card by snail mail. Or cooking a special dinner for my children when they are home to visit. Or stumbling across something that makes us think of them and dropping it in the mail as a surprise gift at random times during the year. When my son and his wife were living in Maryland, and unable to come home for Thanksgiving, I sent them a care package. The day before it arrived, they’d gone to the grocery store looking for sourdough bread and had come home disappointed. Imagine their delight when the opened my package with a loaf inside!

We all have our own special love language. So I asked our Lanterns to share how they express their love and care for the special people in their lives.

For Mari Christie, it’s taking the time to listen.

“I tend to show I care by simply listening to people, which was a hard-won skill that took me many years to cultivate. I keep my family and friend circle fairly small, so it is easy to keep up with everyone, without leaving people out. I very much enjoy giving gifts as well, and active listening makes it easier to find the right thing.”

Linda Ulleseit expresses love by what she creates in her kitchen.

I am the cook in the family. I delight in making massive meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas and baking goodies for birthdays. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened, I made a coffee cake that my family loves. It is yellow cake from scratch with praline topping of flake cereal and brown sugar. The picture really doesn’t do it justice! Anyway, I made it to soothe nerves rattled from the earthquake and ate half of it myself.

Cooking is so special to me, I created a cookbook of family recipes for my daughter-in-law when she married my son. It has a line or two of the recipe’s history with each one. The recipes come from me, my mother, both my grandmothers, my mother-in-law, and both my husband’s grandmothers.

In the words of our Regency Romance author, Edie Cay:

“Love languages are probably an inherent personality trait tied to the way a person communicates, and having a writer and a scientist in a marriage makes for a bit of a mismatch. I want to hear love declared, but my very science-oriented husband is not much of a talker. We’ve been together almost twenty years now (okay, actually 17), and I’ve learned to accept the way he speaks love, and learned to speak his language in return.

This is his latest declaration–a bread-proofing board for our wood stove. In the winter, my bread can’t rise in the kitchen because it is too cold. So my husband built a board to place on top of the stove cage (which he also built), and it makes it warm enough to allow the yeast to do its work. In return, I bake his favorite cookies, cook dinner without asking what he would like or even telling him the plan.

I’m thinking my kiddo might have inherited that same proclivity, as when I tell him every day that I love him, he sighs and says, “Why do you say that every day? I KNOW.” But when I pick him up from school with water and fruit snacks in his car seat cupholders, he feels my love, and he smiles.

Michal Strutin shows love by giving of her time.

We’re a social species. We need emotional glue—love, affection—to function best. And, yet, living with other people can be hard. Really hard. Much as I seamlessly share so much of my waking life with my husband, I sometimes want to throw him out the window. (Don’t worry, we live in a one-story house.) It’s not that either of us is a terrible person, it’s that we are human, thus inconstant beings.

And sometimes the emotional waves of our lives don’t mesh. At those times I remind myself that love, woven through a flexible network of family and friends, smooths life’s bumps. A network of love also allows you to be brave in the world, knowing you have a welcoming sanctuary of people to return to. 

To maintain this network, we are all available to be rough-patch support. We do it because, perhaps selfishly, we love spending luxuriously idle hang-out time with each other and don’t want to jeopardize that. I’m thankful for my husband and my family, knowing that love takes work—rewarding work—on everyone’s part. Fortunately, love also can be simple: making time to be with each other for no purposeful reason except to sit together, relaxed, and watch mockingbirds sing and snack in the manzanita tree. 

Jane Austen Addendum

Some people think Jane Austen’s books are about mere manners. But I think they are much like the straits of love we navigate today. She goads her characters to find emotional honesty and harmony in their lives, the sweet spot between their place in society and their individuality, the place that allows them to be loving and loved. 

Anne Beggs has a plethora of wonderful ways to express love, especially for those getting on in years.

How do I show Love and Care to Family and Friends? This question brings to mind so very many things, often the small things; things I don’t have in photos-doing the laundry, yardwork, helping with homework. Listening. Being present. The grander things, like camping and fishing, picking up other people litter, learning reverence for nature and our planet are all captured in photos reflecting the beauty and awe.

My Mother was a GOAT, Greatest Of All Time. Mother, grandmother, friend, and neighbor. Always there, always dependable. The “go to”, the “count on”. It was so sad and difficult to see her diminish from an injury and the dementia that set in with her infirmity. But the family rallied and was there. Keeping her the center, the matriarch, as she deserved. Holidays and family gathering were a rich tradition for us. We continued to decorate her home and provide entertainment.

As she became more childlike, we provided her the festivities she never enjoyed during her Great Depression childhood-cakes, cookies, balloons, gifts, a manicure! Every day was HER day. Fun, little things during her long days as an invalid.

A have a photo of us on St. Patrick’s Day, with our traditional green parfait – pistachio pudding and lime jello. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it – YUMZO. On the chair next to Mom is the afghan her grandmother croqueted, present in so many family photos over the decades.

So many ways to show love. I am grateful for the family dynamics I had growing up, surrounded by devoted, hardworking family, showing love, not telling it. Big thank You to the Universe for this.

Tell us a little about your love language. After all, we all need a little love in our lives!